Glacier alarm 'regrettable error': UN climate head

January 23, 2010
by Rupam Jain Nair

The head of the UN's climate science panel R.K. Pachauri addresses the press in New Delhi on January 23. Pachauri said Saturday a doomsday prediction about the fate of Himalayan glaciers was "a regrettable error" but that he would not resign over the blunder.

The head of the UN's climate science panel said Saturday a doomsday prediction about the fate of Himalayan glaciers was "a regrettable error" but that he would not resign over the blunder.

Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said the mistake arose from "established procedures not being diligently followed."

"I am not resigning from my post. There has been an error but we will ensure greater consistency in every (future) report," he said.

"I am not brushing anything under the carpet," he added.

Pachauri was referring to a forecast which featured in a benchmark 2007 report on global warming that the probability of glaciers in the Himalayas "disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high."

The IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report was a 938-page opus whose warning that climate change was on the march spurred politicians around the world to vow action.

Earlier in week, the panel apologised for "the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures."

In the latest statement on what the media have dubbed "Climategate," Pachauri said the report's general conclusions that Himalayan glaciers were retreating due to global warming were "robust, appropriate, and entirely consistent with the underlying science."

"The world is on the path of unsustainable development and we will have to change our lifestyle," he told reporters.

He said the forecast that the glaciers could disappear by 2035 may have "genuinely alarmed" some people.

But he said there had been a benefit in that it created a "heightened awareness about the real threat to Himalayan glaciers."

The IPCC co-won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for bringing climate change to the world's attention.

The glacier error came to light after four prominent glaciologists and hydrologists wrote a letter to the prestigious US journal Science. They said the paragraph's mistakes stemmed from a report by the conservation group WWF.

WWF had picked up a news report based on an unpublished study, compounded by the accidental inversion of a date -- 2035 instead of 2350 -- in a Russian paper published in 1996.

"These errors could have been avoided had the norms of scientific publication, including peer review and concentration upon peer-reviewed work, been respected," according to the letter to Science.

Pachauri defended the panel's overall work, a position shared by other scientists, who say the core conclusions about climate change are incontrovertible.

He added he would finish the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Reports.

The reports, due out in 2013 and 2014, will focus on sea level changes, the influence of periodic climate patterns such as the monsoon season and El Nino, and forge a more precise picture of the regional effects of climate change.

"Rational people continue to repose faith in IPCC and are seeing the larger picture," Pachauri said.

India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said following revelation of the gaffe he felt "vindicated" after repeatedly challenging the IPCC's work on glaciers.

Ramesh has said he believes there is no "conclusive scientific evidence" linking global warming to the melting of glaciers.

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The only thing these guys regret is getting caught. This is just one of a long line of examples of outright lying in an alarmist fashion.

isovine, this isn't trivial for someone who is head of a group that is trying to dictate fiscal policy for the entire world.

"Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said the mistake arose from "established procedures not being diligently followed.""

This is unacceptable for one who claims to be a scientist. Also it is a breach of ethics not to follow the rules of your own organization. One that HE leads, I might add.

Pachauri said the "error"(lie) may have genuinely alarmed some people but had a benefit in that it created a "heightened awareness about the real threat to Himalayan glaciers."Beneficial lies, dirty little secrets, hide the decline, the inconvenient truth? People all around the world are waking up and seeing the AGW scam for what it is. A tangled web is unraveling.

30+ years of satellite measurements of the Himalayan glacier coverage shows absolutely no trend up or down and the IPCC "experts" (self-appointed of course) knew this before the last report but it didn't fit with their agenda so they used a guess instead of the data.Is Pachauri aware how corrupted the global temperature data from NOAA, NASA/GISS, and CRU has become with about 90% of the stations data being eliminated in the 90's? Does he care? The vast majority, much greater than 90%, of the stations were at high elevations and at high latitudes. The result is to make the early 20th century and before accurate but force recent temperatures to appear very much warmer than they really are. So, the sudden rapid temperature rise in the 90's is really due to the elimination of essentially all of the lower temperature data. http://icecap.us/...gate.pdfThe FOIA release of the UEA/CRU emails, data, and methods is only the tip of the iceberg (warmingberg?).

Reading the ** questioning NOAA, NASA/GISS, and CRU?Why not say it right out instead. A conspiracy, right :) NOOA f.ex collects data world wide through buoys, land stations, satellites. Instead of taking his words on trust why not check it up yourselves. http://www.ncdc.n...licy.pdf and for the older satellite systems NOAA-D http://www.friend...oaa.html

"The world is on the path of unsustainable development and we will have to change our lifestyle," he told reporters.

This is the problem. The changes this error-prone (this is being kind, better to say con-man) person wants us to make are massive, will wreck civilization and kill hundreds of millions of people. Why do people still listen to this type of trickster?

@yoronYes NOAA collect the data and then they torture the data in ways that they and NASA refuse, under FOI, to reveal what they want to see. Since the FOIA CRU emails confirm that the tortured CRU data is virtually the same as NOAA the only way the 2 can be the same is if there is collusion, or conspiracy if you wish. ALL of these same people reporting similar diddled data at NOAA, CRU and NASA/GISS worked together to produce the (un-)scientific portion of 4th IPCC report. The opportunity for collusion (conspiracy) was rife and the evidence for the data diddling is revealed to us in the CRU emails.The evidence for the extensive removal of high elevation and high latitude data beginning in the '80's is unassailable: http://icecap.us/...gate.pdfThe evidence of how they go about distorting 1 regions data is also unassailable since they use the RAW data; http://wattsupwit...in-zero/The data consists of lies. GIGO

deatopmg

@yoronThe isolated melting of 1 lake as reported by the special interest lobbying WWF is meaningless. NOAA has not released (refuses to release?) any information requested under FOI. Their Open Access is PR BS and they are about as Transparent as Washington D.C. has been. Read my 2 ref's if you want to learn how some of the diddling methods have been applied, they reveal how NOAA and their co-conspirators have managed to produce global warming from thin air.

The changes this error-prone (this is being kind, better to say con-man) person wants us to make are massive, will wreck civilization and kill hundreds of millions of people

A little extreme but much soil for debate.How Humans Get Things Done:"In 1987 the American Physics Society concluded that a global shield such as "Star Wars" was not only impossible with existing technology, but that ten more years of research was needed to learn whether it might ever be feasible."" these programs continue to be a key source of funding for top research scientists in the fields of high-energy physics, supercomputing/computation, advanced materials, and many other critical science and engineering disciplines... which would be largely unavailable outside of the defense budget environment"

-Star Wars lives. I didn't know that. Who bets that AGW will play out the same way, producing the same kinds of vital ancillary results?

More on the starvation issue. Increased use of biofuels has already taken food out of the mouths of starving people. Carbon trading, cap and trade will greatly (perhaps double) the price of food, an estimated 10 million additional people will starve each year as a result of these changes.

Carbon trading will greatly decrease food producing capacity. This is an immoral scheme that will make the holocaust look innocent. It is even being suggested that the carbon trading scheme is really a secret eugenics policy to reduce world population. Either way, we shouldn't accept this kind of cost for bad science.

"L-Let all the p-p-poisons that lurk in the m-mud hatch out" -I Claudius

taken food out of the mouths of starving people

Their stagnant, obsolete cultures based on Pleistocene attrition and reproduction rates, are the reason those people are starving and their environments are collapsing. Peruse this site:http://www.johnst....html#SU-You'll note the 1 BILLION abortions since the 1950s, in countries now largely free of the starvation and strife youre referring to. There are cultures today which allow overpop to happen, and there are those fundamentalisms which insist that it do as a horrible form of aggression. You condemn Dresden and Holdomor and the US destruction of N Korean reservoirs and not accept that the same things are being done today of utmost necessity? War is war. The people cause it; they are indeed the enemy.

It is even being suggested that the carbon trading scheme is really a secret eugenics policy to reduce world population.

Does the fantasy world of the conspiracy theorist know no bounds......

Look up John Holdren's (Obama's Science Advisor) book Ecoscience. In it he discusses various scenarios to accomplish drastic involuntary population reduction, including putting "mass sterilants" into the water and food supply. He discusses how important it would be to make the dosage of the sterilant effective. He discusses how important it is for there to be a dictatorial world government to enforce these policies.

After that, it is not a stretch to speculate as to the motives of the AGW political movement.

Oh, so you agree that Hitler, Stalin and their ilk were right. Yeah, the world would be better off without those who "unfortunately populate the planet." So go right ahead with your carbon trading scheme, shut down industry and agriculture and consequently cause the deaths of billions of people. You might even be remembered in history.

Should a Law of the Sea be successfully established, it could serve as a model for a future Law of the Atmosphere to regulate the use of airspace, to monitor climate change, and to control atmospheric pollution. Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime—sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment...The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries' shares within their regional limits.

The world is monstrous, not me sir. Just because these things are too horrible to consider doesnt mean theyre not being done, and for the reasons I've given. In fact it makes them much easier to do, yes? We're rats in a box. The din is deafening.

Claudius was horrified when Livia told him she had killed off all his relatives, including her beloved Augustus. But he SHOULD HAVE KNOWN. And maybe he did, it was only his stuttering and playing the fool which kept her from killing him too.

"There was a time when the countless tribes of men, though wide-dispersed, oppressed the surface of the deep-bosomed earth, and Zeus saw it and had pity and in his wise heart resolved to relieve the all-nurturing earth of men by causing the great struggle of the Ilian war, that the load of death might EMPTY THE WORLD. And so the heroes were slain in Troy, and the plan of Zeus came to pass."

It's long past time for responsible people to put an end to this alarmist scam and send it back to Basic Research. This time with honest and honorable researchers, not politicians out to redesign the world.

If Mr. Pachauri didn't have the majority of his financial portfolio engrossed in "Green" technology and wasn't positioned to become the second "carbon billionaire" I might believe him when he states that it was an error.

Unfortunately he does stand to make a massive windfall if alarm continues. He should resign based on his personal conflict of interest if the data is so sound.

Our biology makes it so. Politics arose to deal with it. Leaders realized they had to go beyond politics in order for the world and the species to survive. Leaders realized that they had to accept what was INEVITABLE and begin to deal with it; and that the measures they would HAVE to employ would never be accepted by the people, if they knew. And so we have monsterous things happening seemingly because of greed and insanity, and lack of concern; but the outcomes of these events ALWAYS favor overall Stability and Progress when just the opposite should be true.

You all keep on blaming those in apparent power for their avarice, pride, or ignorance, while the millions will still starve, and the technology will still be developed, and the world will still go on; in spite of what you say or do or think; By Design and not by happenstance or the will of any god. Its what we do. We're Planners you see.

Otto means the entire human species, of course, and not to be implying that he is a demagogue or anything of the sort, or wishes to be. (standard disclaimer)

Mr. Pachauri certainly looks the Part doesnt he? Long hair, an apparently committed though distracted intellectual (well, uh, certainly we make mistakes! We're very busy you know! Time is wasting!) In Politics, image is everything-

He virtually says "the ends justify the means". That is there is a benefit from scaring people with false information. Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg, or is it glacier. Try friendsofscience.org for more.

In effect he has admitted that the IPCC considers it beneficial to use false info to get the agenda they want, which is 3-fold: 1) Money 2) One-world government 3) Population control (yes as in Hitler's goal)A lot of people already know this. Millions. But a lot more don't. And that's what's scary. I will never trust a single statement by the IPCC.

So that national geographic channel program I watched the other day was a lie. I'm getting so sick of all the climate change mistakes and them trying to play it off like it's not important. Just the facts, please. Give us the facts, if you don't have facts, don't say anything.

Is it a error that temperatures for stations that have been eliminated from the global temperature database (not that the station itself has always gone away, just the data isn't "correct") has been interpolated using "nearby" stations that may be 200Km away at a different altitude?http://chiefio.wo...-effect/

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